Navigation systems, which guide a user to a destination, have gained popularity and accessibility in the past decade. In particular, many vehicles, such as cars, are nowadays delivered with navigation systems already installed, and also portable navigation systems (which also may, e.g., be applications running on smartphones) are increasingly popular, which may be used both in vehicles and outside vehicles, for example, for pedestrian navigation. Corresponding navigation systems are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,783,421, European Published Patent Application No. 2 141 610, and European Published Patent Application No. 1 876 418.
Such navigation systems output navigation instructions to a user in visual and/or auditory form to guide a user to a selected destination. Conventionally, for example, auditory instructions use distance information, such as “turn right in 200 meters.” Additionally, visual information may be displayed, e.g., showing the surroundings of the user on a display, and the above-mentioned distance information may also be given in written form on such a display.
However, such navigation instructions based on distance may in some circumstances be ambiguous to a driver of a vehicle because estimating distances is not always easy, especially under high speed, high traffic, and/or high workload situations. In particular, in urban areas, for example, streets may come frequently, such that a distance to turn information may become difficult to process and interpret.
Therefore, it is possible to additionally or alternatively use landmarks for navigation instructions, for example “turn right at coffee shop XXX,” where XXX for example identifies a particular chain, e.g., having a specific brand or trademark, of coffee shops. However, such landmarks may not be equally recognizable by everyone. For example, a person may be unfamiliar with coffee shops of a particular chain and not recognize them, making navigation again difficult.
Therefore, a need is believed to exist for continuous improvement of navigation systems and methods, in particular, to provide navigation instructions to users which are easier to understand and follow.